Are you ready to risk YOUR LIFE on "Electronic Medical Records"?

Once again there is a call being put forward to press medical practices and hospitals into adopting the federal desire for the creation of a nationwide system of electronic medical records. 

Many of the stories being generated following the disastrous effects of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast are stating that if the medical records of the individuals impacted had been stored electronically, they would be safe now.  But unfortunately, this is a serious overstatement.  And fortunately, there are some who recognize this.

Not only is the conversion of legacy data costly and inexact (much information is handwritten, or on varying qualities of paper and non-standard size forms which don't easily scan and seldom convert through the use of OCR) but there are no standards established for the digital storage formats, the media for storage, or procedures for effective conversion and migration to avoid degradation and obsolesence of applications, hardware and/or media.

Additionally, there are concerns to be addressed about the privacy of PHI, much of which is covered under various aspects of HIPAA and other Federal and state legislation (see "Health Information Privacy). 

I question the appropriateness of the Federal Government, under the auspices of the DHHS to make statements such as this:

Federal regulations do not require patient consent for their records to be shared for medical purposes. Companies or organizations that have such data must have formal agreements with each other before data can be exchanged, but the government said it would not enforce those rules while Katrina victims were in need, as long at the entities had verbal agreements to use the data for the relief effort.

If the organizations MUST HAVE formal agreements before exchanging data, how is it the DHHS can state they won't enforce them?  There is no reason that the data needed to be aggregated to search through multiple databases, and anyone in the RIM and IT  industries clearly know this.  The DHHS is simply attempting to capitalize on an opportunity placed before them in the name of Hurricane Katrina to push their agenda.

Until sufficient safeguards are put in place to protect the privacy of individual's PHI and systems are developed to standardize the manner in which data is collected and managed to result in a long-lasting toolkit for effectively managing medical records electronically, I'd sooner see mine remain in a sheaf of papers.

All individuals are given the opportunity to contact their medical care professionals and request copies of their records at any time.  They may need to pay a fee for those copies, but they can then apply the safeguards they feel are necessary to properly protect them for damage or loss, even if that includes scanning then and storing them electronically themselves.  And while everyone may not be equipped to manage their own records, I think most of us are better equipped than the Federal Government.